Meeting Notes

February 2, 2021

 

President Paul welcomed everyone to today’s Mountain View Rotary Meeting.  The Rotary International theme for this year is “Rotary Opens Opportunities.”  Our Club theme is “We Open Opportunities For Everyone in the Community.” 

 

Mandy is our Rotary Foundation Chair and she wanted to share that we have raised $7,600 for the Foundation with 20 Members donating so far.  The goal for the Club is to have 100% participation in this year’s contributions to the Foundation.  You can send your donation for The Rotary Foundation to Mandy Andrei at 2934 Vivian Lane, San Jose, CA 95124.  If you prefer, you can also make your donation to The Rotary Foundation on line at https://my.rotary.org/en/donate.   If you make an on line donation, please send a message to Mandy to let her know.  Feel free to give Mandy a call if you have any questions at 650-281-4356 or email her at mandyandrai@gmail.com.

 

For anyone who would like to join the President’s Club, please make your checks out for $150 to the Mountain View Rotary Club and send them to Mountain View Rotary President’s Club, PO Box 390280, Mountain View, California 94041.

 

From Heather:  If you have speaker ideas for the upcoming year, please sign up for a week(s) or month via this spreadsheet or contact me by email (hsten@me.com) or phone:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yWN7DTtzVo5i8Zk8lAeZFM8f6fZ0D5-b/view?usp=sharing.

 

President Paul announced that we will be unable to have a Crab Feed event this year because of the pandemic.  He asked that all members consider donating whatever they would have spent on tickets to the Crab Feed.  The funds will be used for the Club’s charitable grants for the year.  Members may make their checks out to “Mountain View Rotary Endowment” and send them to Mountain View Rotary Endowment, PO Box 390280, Mountain View, California 94041.  All donations to the Mountain View Rotary Endowment are fully tax deductible.  And thanks to Tori’s incredible kindness, for every $60 donated, you will get a chance to win a weekend stay (three days and two nights) at Tori’s property in Half Moon Bay with the drawing to be held in March.

 

Anita announced that the Club will begin accepting Community Grant requests.  This year’s theme is Education and Literacy.  The link for the grant application form is: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1SULhpIHO_nylhiIuv8qjcz6Pux84fPoPAg0zsaDEvBc/prefill

 

President Elect Heather is in the process of forming her Board for the next Rotary year.  If anyone is interested in a most exciting position on the Board, please contact either Heather or Past President Tom.  If we are short of volunteers, Tom has indicated that he will shift into draft mode.

 

Heather also told us that this year’s Rotary International Conference in Taipei has been canceled because of the pandemic and it will be replaced with a virtual conference.

 

Sanjay informed us that our Speech Contest this year will be virtual and we currently have two contestants with hopefully more to come.  Jack, Scott, and Heather volunteered to serve as judges for the contest and Judy volunteered to be the teller.

 

Visitors to the meeting today included Bruce Karney, Tom Moran, and Mitch.

 

We wished President Paul and First Lady Susan a happy Nineteenth Anniversary.  And we congratulated Scott on his retirement from Villa Siena.

 

President Paul announced that there would be no in person meetings through the month of April, but he is hopeful that we may be able to resume our meetings as early as May.

 

If anyone knows of any of our members in distress or that need anything, please let President Paul or one of the Board Members know.  We want to make sure everyone knows that we are here to take care of each other.

 

 

Heather introduced our own Jack Wong to provide an Update on the Market and the Club’s Endowment.

 

Jack started out listing the winners of a contest he offered when he gave his last presentation to the Club.  Some of our members were quite astute predicting the progress of equities during the last year.  Jack donate $100 to the Club Endowment to honor the winners.

 

Jack indicated that the market will likely continue its Bullish trend for at least the next twelve months.  With interest rates low, there is a great deal of focus on the Equities Market.  Also, the new stimulus funds will help fuel the positive movement.

 

Some of the areas Jack has seen the biggest growth in during the pandemic are in technology and home improvement.

 

Some concerns affecting the market include a possible increase in interest rates, uncertainty of the new administration, stocks being overpriced, and increasing inflation due to costs associated with the pandemic.

 

Investments to consider at this time involve what people are using day to day. Some areas of interest are lithium batteries, ecommerce shopping, innovation technologies, and energy recovery.

 

Our Club’s Endowment has done very well during the last year with an increase of more than 23%.

 

 

Tuesday, February 16, 2021, via Zoom.  Social time will start at 12:00 pm with the meeting beginning at 12:15 pm. Our speaker will be Doctor Steve Nichols giving us an Update On the Pandemic and Vaccine. 

 

There will be a Board Meeting on Thursday, February 11, 2021, starting at 5:30 pm via Zoom.